there is no medicine for it-nor do I desire to be cured of a remedy. Adieu !

LETTER CCCCXXXVIII.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 26, 1785.

THOUGH I am delighted to see your hand writing, I beg you will indulge me no more with it. It fatigues you, and that gives me more pain than your letters can give me satisfaction. Dictate a few words on your health to your secretary; it will suffice. I don't care a straw about the King and Queen of Naples, nor whether they visit your little Great Duke and Duchess. I am glad when Monarchs are playing with one another, instead of scratching: it is better they should be idle than mischievous. As I desire you not to write, I cannot be alarmed at a strange hand.

Your philosophic account of yourself is worthy of you. Still, I am convinced you are better than you seem to think. A cough is vexatious, but in old persons is a great preservative. It is one of the forms in which the gout appears, and exercises and clears the lungs. I know actually two persons, no chickens, who are always very ill if they have no annual cough. You may imagine that I have made observations in plenty on the gout: yes, yes, I know its ways and its jesuitic evasions. I beg its pardon, it is a better soul than it appears to be; it is we that misuse it: if it does not appear with all its credentials, we take it for something else, and attempt to cure it. Being a remedy, and not a disease, it will not be cured; and it is better to let it have its way. If it is content to act the personage of a cough, pray humour it it will prolong your life, if you do not contradict it and fling it somewhere else.

The Administration has received a total defeat in Ireland, which has probably saved us another civil war. Don't wonder that I am continually recollecting my father's Quieta non movere. I have never seen that maxim violated with impunity.. They say, that in town a change of the Ministry is expected. I am not of that opinion; but, indeed, nobody can be more ignorant than I. I see nobody here but people attached to the Court, and who, however, know more than I do; and if I did see any of the other side, they would not be able to give me better information; nor am I curious.

A stranger event than a revolution in politics has happened at Paris. The Cardinal de Rohan is committed to the Bastile for forging the Queen's hand to obtain a collar of diamonds; I know no more of the story but as he is very gallant, it is guessed (here, I mean) that it was for a present to some woman. These circumstances are little Apostolic, and will not prop the falling Church of Rome. They used to forge donations and decretials. This is a new manœuvre. Nor were Cardinals wont to be treated so Cavalierly for peccadilloes..

The House of Rohan is under a cloud: his Eminence's cousin, the Prince of Guemenè, was forced to fly, two or three years ago, for being the Prince of Swindlers. Our Nabobs are not treated so roughly; yet I doubt they collect diamonds still more criminally.

Your nephew will be sorry to hear that the Duke of Montrose's third grandson, Master William Douglas, died yesterday of a fever. These poor Montroses are most unfortunate persons! They had the comfort this spring of seeing Lord Graham* marry: the Duchess said, "I thought I should die of grief, and now I am ready to die of joy." Lady Graham soon proved with child, but soon miscarried; and the Duke and Duchess may not live to have the consolation of seeing an heir-for we must hope and make visions to the last! I am asking for samples of Ginori's porcelain at sixty-eight! Well! are not heirs to great names and families as frail foundations of happiness? and what signifies what baubles we pursue? Philosophers make systems, and we simpletons collections: and we are as wise as they-wiser perhaps, for we know that in a few years our rarities will be dispersed at an auction; and they flatter themselves that their reveries will be immortal, which has happened to no system yet. A curiosity may rise in value; a system is exploded. Such reflections are applicable to politics, and make me look on them as equally nugatory. Last year Mr. Fox was burnt in effigy ; now, Mr. Pitt is. -Oh! my dear sir, it is all a farce! On this day, about a hundred years ago (look at my date,) was born the wisest mant I have seen. He kept this country in peace for twenty years, and it flourished accordingly. He injured no man; was benevolent, good-humoured, and did nothing but the common necessary business of the State. Yet was he burned in effigy too; and so traduced, that his name is not purified yet!-Ask why his memory is not in veneration? You will be told, from libels and trash, that he was the Grand Corrupter. -What did he corrupt the nation to make it happy, rich, and peaceable? Who was oppressed during his administration ?-Those saints, Bolinbroke and Pulteney, were kept out of the Paradise of the Court, ay, and the Pretender was kept out and was kept quiet. Sir Robert fell a rebellion ensued in four years, and the crown shook on the King's head. The nation, too, which had been tolerably corrupted before his time, and which, with all its experience and with its eyes opened, has not cured itself of being corrupt, is not quite so prosperous as in the day of that man, who it seems poisoned its morals. Formerly it was the most virtuous nation on earth! Under Henry the Eighth and his children there was no persecution, no fluctuation of religion: their ministers shifted their faith four times, and were sincere honest men! There was no servility, no flattery, no

*The Marquis of Graham married the eldest daughter of the Earl of Ashburnham. His only sister, Lady Lucy, had been married to Archibald Douglas, the contested heir of the Duke of Douglas, and had died young, leaving three sons and a daughter. The Duke had been blind for thirty years, and the Duchess was paralytic.

Sir Robert Walpole, first Earl of Orford, Prime Minister to George I. and II.

contempt of the nation abroad, under James the First. No tyrann" under Charles the First and Laud; no factions, no civil war! Charles the Second, however, brought back all the virtues and morality, which, somehow or other, were missing! His brother's was a still more blessed reign, though in a different way! King William was disturbed and distressed by no contending factions, and did not endeavour to bribe them to let him pursue his great object of humbling France! The Duke of Marlborough was not overborne in a similar and more glorious career by a detestable Cabal!—and if Oxford and Bolinbroke did remove him, from the most patriot motives, they, good men! used no corruption! Twelve Peerages showered at once, to convert the House of Lords, were no bribes; nor was a shilling issued for secret services; nor would a member of either House have received it! Sir R. Walpole came, and, strange to tell, found the whole Parliament and every Parliament, at least a great majority of every Parliament, ready to take his money. For what?-to undo their country!—which, however, wickedly as he meant, and ready as they were to concur, he left in every respect in the condition he found it, except in being improved in trade, wealth, and tranquillity; till its friends who expelled him, had dipped their poor country in a war; which was far from mending its condition. Sir Robert died, foretelling a rebellion, which happened in less than six months, and for predicting which he had been ridiculed; and in detestation of a maxim ascribed to him by his enemies, that every man has his price, the tariff of every Parliament since has been as well known as the price of beef and mutton; and the universal electors, who cry out against that traffic, are not a jot less vendible than their electors.-Was not Sir Robert Walpole an abominable Minister?

29th.

The man who certainly provoked Ireland to think, is dead-Lord Sackville.*

30th.

I see, by the Gazette, that Lord Cowper's pinchbeck principality is allowed. I wonder his Highness does not desire the Pope to make one of his sons a bishop in partibus infidelium.

LETTER CCCCXXXIX.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 4, 1785.

I DON'T love to transgress my monthly regularity; yet, as you must prefer facts to words, why should I write when I have nothing to tell you? The newspapers themselves in a peaceable autumn coin wonders from Ireland, or live on the accidents of the Equinox. They,

* Lord George Sackville Germaine, third son of Lionel, Duke of Dorset, who, when secretary to his father, when Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, gave rise, by his haughty behaviour, to the factions that have ever since disturbed that country, and at last shaken off its submission to this country.

he newspapers, have been in high spirits on the prospect of a campaign in Holland; but the Dutch, without pity for the gazetteers of Europe, are said to have submitted to the Emperor's terms: however, the intelligence-merchants may trust that he will not starve them long!

Your neighbour, the Queen of Sardinia, it seems, is dead: but, if there was any thing to say about her, you must tell it to me, not I to you: for, till she died, I scarce knew that she had been alive.

Our Parliament is put off till after Christmas; so, I have no more resource from domestic politics than from foreign wars. For my own particular, I desire neither. I live here in tranquillity and idleness, can content myself with trifles, and think the world is much the happier when it has nothing to talk of. Most people ask, "Is there any news?"-How can one want to know one does not know what? when any thing has happened, one hears it.

There is one subject on which I wish I had occasion to write; I think it long since I heard how you go on: I flatter myself, as I have no letter from you or your nephew, prosperously. I should prefer a letter from him, that you may not have the trouble; and I shall make this the shorter, as a precedent for his not thinking more than a line necessary. The post does not insist on a certain quantity: it is content with being paid for whatever it carries-nay, is a little unreasonable, as it doubles its price for a cover that contains nothing but a direction and now it is the fashion to curtail the direction as much as possible. Formerly, a direction was an academy of compliments: "To the most noble and my singularly respected friend," &c., &c., -and then, "Haste! haste, for your life, haste!"-Now, we have banished even the monosyllable To! Henry Conway,† Lord Hertford's son, who is very indolent, and has much humour, introduced that abridgment. Writing to a Mr. Tighe at the Temple, he directed his letter only thus: " T. Ti. Temple"-and it was delivered! Dr. Bentley was mightily flattered on receiving a letter superscribed "To Dr. Bentley in England." Times are altered; postmen are now satisfied with a hint. One modern retrenchment is a blessing;

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*This expected rupture between Austria and the United States of Holland did not take place. The Emperor, perceiving from the decisive language held by the Court of Versailles, and the actual assembling of troops near Luxembourg, that if he prosecuted his claims by force of arms, the French would support the Dutch with all their power, thought it more prudent to settle the points in dispute by means of negotiation. He required, indeed, as a previous step, that a formal apology should be made for the insult offered to his flag by the seizure of the brigs upon the Scheldt: and the States, not hesitating to gratify his pride in this instance, sent two of their nobles to Vienna for that purpose in the month of July. This matter being adjusted, conferences were immediately opened between the Austrian and Dutch ambassadors at Paris; and so really desirous were both parties of an amicable arrangement, that the preliminaries were signed on the 12th Sept., and the definitive treaty on the 8th Nov., through the mediation and under the guarantee of the King of France."-Tomline's Memoirs of Pitt.—ED.

† Second son of Francis Seymour Conway, first Earl of Hertford.

one is not obliged to study for an ingenious conclusion, as if writing an epigram-oh! no; nor to send compliments that never were delivered. I had a relation who always finished his letters with "his love to all that was near and dear to us," though he did not care a straw for me or any of his family. It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never put dots over her i's, to save ink: how she would have enjoyed modern economy in that article! She would have died worth a thousand farthings more than she did-nay, she would have known exactly how many; as Sir Robert Brown* did, who calculated what he had saved by never having an orange or lemon on his sideboard. I am surprised that no economist has retrenched second courses, which always consist of the dearest articles, though seldom touched, as the hungry at least dine on the first. Mrs. Leneve,† one summer at Houghton, counted thirty-six turkey-pouts that had been served up without being meddled with.

5th.

I had written thus far yesterday. This minute I receive your nephew's of Sept. 20th; it is not such a one by any means as I had wished for. He tells me, you have had a return of your disorder— indeed, he consoles me with your recovery; but I cannot in a moment shake off the impression of a sudden alarm, though the cause was ceased, nor can a second agitation calm a first on such shattered nerves as mine. My fright is over, but I am not composed. I cannot begin a new letter, and therefore send what I had written. I will only add, what you may be sure I feel, ardent wishes for your perfect health, and grateful thanks to your nephew for his attentionhe is rather your son; but indeed he is Gal's son, and that is the same thing. How I love him for his attendance on you! and how very kind he is in giving me accounts of you! I hope he will continue; and I ask it still more for your sake than for my own, that you may not think of writing yourself. If he says but these

* A noted miser, who raised a great fortune as a merchant at Venice, though his whole wealth when he went thither consisted in one of those vast wigs (a secondhand one, given to him) which were worn in the reign of Queen Anne, and which he sold for five guineas. He returned to England, very rich, in the reign of George II., with his wife and three daughters, who would have been great fortunes. The eldest, about eighteen, fell into a consumption, and, being ordered to ride, her father drew a map of the by-lanes about London, which he made the footman carry in his pocket and observe, that she might ride without paying a turnpike. When the poor girl was past recovery, Sir Robert sent for an undertaker, to cheapen her funeral, as she was not dead, and there was a possibility of her living. He went farther; he called his other daughters, and bad them courtesy to the undertaker, and promise to be his friends; and so they proved, for both died consumptive in two years!

A lady who lived with Sir Robert Walpole, to take care of his youngest daugh ter, Lady Maria, after her mother's death. After Sir Robert's death, and Lady Mary's marriage with Mr. Churchill, she lived with Mr. H. Walpole to her death.

As the sons of Rajahs in India are called Rajah Pouts, and as turkeys came from the East, quære if they were not called Turkey-pouts, as an Eastern diminutive?